#machines

Machines are worshipped because they are beautiful and valued because they confer power; they are hated because they are hideous and loathed because they impose slavery. ↗

— Bertrand Russell

#because #confer #hated #hideous #impose

We often attribute 'understanding' and other cognitive predicates by metaphor and analogy to cars, adding machines, and other artifacts, but nothing is proved by such attributions. ↗

— John Searle

#adding #analogy #attribute #cars #cognitive

Machines were, it may be said, the weapon employed by the capitalists to quell the revolt of specialized labor. ↗

— Karl Marx

#employed #labor #machines #may #quell

The study of thinking machines teaches us more about the brain than we can learn by introspective methods. Western man is externalizing himself in the form of gadgets. ↗

— William S. Burroughs

#naked-lunch #thinking #william-burroughs #introspection

Gliders, sail planes, they're wonderful flying machines. It's the closest you can come to being a bird. ↗

— Neil Armstrong

#bird #closest #come #flying #machines

In course of time the Brothers Cowper removed the manufacture of their printing machines from London, to Manchester. There they found skilled and energetic workmen, ready to carry their plans into effect. ↗

— James Nasmyth

#carry #course #effect #energetic #found

We have to make machines understand what they're doing, or they won't be able to come back and say, 'Why did you do that?' ↗

— Nicholas Negroponte

#back #come #did #doing #machines

I was 17 and just learning what high fidelity was, what good sound was, and learning the mechanics of tape machines. It was a real education, going right from the consumer end to the record factory. ↗

— Alan Parsons

#education #end #factory #fidelity #going

As for myself: I had come to the conclusion that there was nothing sacred about myself or any human being, that we were all machines, doomed to collide and collide and collide. For want of anything better to do, we became fans of collisions. Sometimes I wrote well about collisions, which meant I was a writing machine in good repair. Sometimes I wrote badly, which meant I was a writing machine in bad repair. I no more harbored sacredness than did a Pontiac, a mousetrap, or a South Bend Lathe. ↗

— Kurt Vonnegut

#human #life #machines #relationships #death

I’d imagine the whole world was one big machine. Machines never come with any extra parts, you know. They always come with the exact amount they need. So I figured, if the entire world was one big machine, I couldn’t be an extra part. I had to be here for some reason. And that means you have to be here for some reason, too. ↗

— Hugo Cabret

#machinery #machines #man #reasons #imagination